The voice at the other end of the phone was all charm, from the South by way of Vancouver, B.C.. I took a seat in the lobby of the posh Clift Hotel. I drank coffee, a tall Starbucks' Misto, from a cardboard cup. And I thought about the man I was about to meet...
Gibson. William Gibson. Celebrated novelist. The man who coined the term "cyberspace." Treated like a rock star by Wired. Sent to interview U2 some years back by Details. Recently asked to write about the Net by the New York Times.
At 48, Gibson has just published his fifth novel, Idoru (the Japanese word for idol). And so he is here, in San Francisco for a few days before heading on to the next city. Traveling the book promotion circuit, moving from one first class hotel to another, picked up by a limo and driven from interview to book store, book store to interview. Gibson is not the first to benefit from the '90s concept of author-as-celebrity, but he is, 12 years after the publication of Neuromancer, the novel that made him a star, certainly accustomed to the fine art of late '90s book promotion. "Writers are people who work away in the basement by themselves," he'll tell me shortly. But this, this book promotion thing, "is like being a rock star, only without the parties."
Probably one of the best introductions to an influential work I've read in agea. Gibson is more than a pioneer, he is a visionary, and the future before us is a testament.
Friday, November 8, 2013
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
The Zeppelin Conductors’ Society Annual Gentlemen’s Ball
So hook yourself up to an airshipStrap on your mask and your knifeFor the wide open skies are a-callingAnd oh, it’s a glorious life!
—Conductors Recruitment Advertisement, 1890I really enjoyed this short story about airship conductors in Lightspeed Magazine. The magazine is quickly taking my attention away from the likes of Omni and Analog.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End
Childhood’s End was published in 1953. It’s a truly classic science fiction novel, and a deeply influential one, and one of the books that makes Clarke’s reputation. It’s also a very very strange book. It does as much as any half dozen normal books, and all in 218 pages, and it does it by setting up expectations and completely overturning them, repeatedly.
The prologue of Childhood’s End is brilliant, and it stands completely alone. It’s 1975. There’s an ex-Nazi rocket scientist in the U.S. worrying that his old friend the ex-Nazi rocket scientist in the U.S.S.R. will reach the moon before him. You’ve read this story a million times, you know where it’s going, you settle in to a smooth familiar kind of ride. Then quietly without any fuss, huge alien ships appear over all of Earth’s major cities. And this is just the first surprise, the first few pages of a book that goes about as far from the standard assumptions and standard future of SF as it’s possible to go.Spoilers! Everyone dies!
People talk about SF today being too gloomy — my goodness, Childhood’s End has all of humanity die and then the Earth destroyed. It’s not even relentlessly upbeat about it, it has a elegaic tone.
More: Wow! Wait, What? Wow!: Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End | Tor.com
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Designing the Perfect Engineer in Prometheus
Blockbuster film designer and creature creator Neville Page talks about the unlikely influences he used to create the engineer in Prometheus. Page is currently designing elements of Ridley Scott's new Blade Runner.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Science Fiction and Individual Liberty
Classical literary science fiction has become far removed from modern sci-fi film. The latest Star Trek film is a stark contrast from the deep intellectual exploration of the themes of individuality versus collectivism, the role of the state, and an optimistic view of the future from works like Asimov's Foundation, Herbert's Dune, or the work of Heinlein.
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